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Sept. 21 — In an exclusive interview, China State Councilor Yang Jiechi discusses what President Xi is hoping to accomplish during his visit to the U.S. He speaks to Bloomberg’s Betty Liu on “Trending Business.”Bloomberg

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first stop on his United States tour isn’t the White House — it’s Seattle, where he will meet with U.S. technology companies eager to expand in China but concerned about Beijing increasing its already tight grip on electronic communication.

Xi and a host of tech leaders from both nations are expected to attend the U.S-China Internet Industry Forum on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Wash. on Wednesday.

This is Xi’s first official state visit to the United States since he became China’s president in 2013.It comes at a challenging time for the two nations, with technology and cybersecurity high on the list of concerns.

Information about who will be at the forum has not been make public, but CEOs from Microsoft, Apple, Baidu, Alaibaba may attend, say media reports.

Xi will be joined by Lu Wei, who heads China’s General Office of the Central Leading Group for Internet Security and Informatization, otherwise known as China’s Internet czar.

The meeting could be like a family holiday dinner, with underlying tensions simmering beneath the surface.

“For Xi Jinping, appearing to lead the agenda with top technology firms may help to burnish his image at home in light of slowing growth and stock market troubles,” said Susan Whiting, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Washington in Seattle.

For U.S. technology companies, the hope is to create stronger relations with China and so gain access to its massive market of 1.3 billion people, 668 million of whom are online.

A stumbling block is the state control and censorship long built into the Chinese Internet.

That grip has been tightening in ways that make U.S. companies uncomfortable. In July the Chinese legislature passed a restrictive National Security Law. It is now considering a draft Cyber Security Law. Both give the government sweeping powers to police electronic communications.

The moves were at least partially in response to revelations from Edward Snowden that the United States conducts widespread global surveillance.

The New York Times reported last week that China has asked some U.S. firms to pledge to make their their products sold in China “secure and controllable.”

Such demands “would force foreign companies to put back doors into their products or share source code” to allow Chinese officials control over them, said Adam Segal, director of the digital and cyberspace policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Rights groups want U.S. companies to push back.

In an open letter published Friday, Human Rights Watch urged U.S. firms to “ask President Xi to reverse his government’s expansion of surveillance, censorship, and data collection.”

Another slow-boil issue is China’s involvement, official or unofficial, in cyber attacks and cyber espionage against U.S. targets.